Over a month ago, I was commenting to my family that one of our favourite flavours of ice cream was no longer being made – Haagen Dazs Bailey’s Ice Cream. Hence in order to replicate the taste, I had bought some Haagen Dazs Vanilla ice cream, and added Bailey’s Irish cream to it – it had to be mixed in and resulted in a mushy mixture. I thought there must be a way of making ice cream myself. Hence I looked into getting an ice cream maker – one which did not cost too much. As Amazon had a good offer for the Aicok ice cream maker on their Lightning Deal, I decided to take the plunge and bought one. Continue reading Aicok Ice Cream Maker→

Today in UK, we celebrated Mother’s Day. My daughters and I decided to prepare and serve the three meals of the day for my wife, so she could have the break she deserved from looking after her family. The plan was for my oldest daughter to prepare breakfast, my youngest to prepare lunch and I would prepare and cook dinner. I had also bought some special tequila to make her favourite cocktail – Margarita. Continue reading Mother’s Day→

We had our annual Chinese New Year reunion dinner on 15/2/18. Unfortunately due to my work schedule, I have not had the time or opportunity to post about this until now. In fact our food preparations had started a day or two before this. Continue reading Chinese New Year Feast→

This Valentine’s day is fairly significant for my wife and I, as it is the 20th time we were celebrating this as husband and wife. Hence I took the day off so we could share the day together. And with Valentine’s day sandwiched between Pancake day and Chinese New Year’s eve, this week is certainly going to be a very busy week for us. Continue reading Valentine’s Day 2018→

Being Pancake day today, my wife and youngest daughter had planned from last week to make some pancakes today – banana pancakes which are her favourite type. We did keep a few ripe bananas just for this purpose. Continue reading Pancake Day→

Recently when I went for my haircut at the beginning of the year, somehow the discussion with my barber drifted to the topic of wine. My barber told me that his father had bought a commemorative bottle of wine from Italia ’90, and over the Christmas 2017 they had decided to open that bottle to drink. Unfortunately the cork had dried up and the wine had oxidised into vinegar. But he had retained that interesting bottle at his shop as a souvenir of that event.

A few weeks after this, I was rummaging through the kitchen cupboards looking for something, when I stumbled across a small bottle of Bordeaux wine. As the provenance (where the wine came from, life cycle and storage conditions) was not ideal, I was skeptical but curious about what that wine would look like, how it would smell and taste. I told my wife that I would like to have a taste test of this with her, and she was definitely up for it. I moved it into the wine fridge for a few weeks, while we waited for the ideal time to do the taste test. Continue reading A Pleasant Surprise→

One of the things I wanted to be able to do was maximise the photos captured with the camera on my iPhone X – to be able to use off-camera flash, using the lowest ISO and shooting in RAW. The only feasible option for using one or more good-sized camera flash with the iPhone is the Godox A1. It cost me £61.90 from Amazon.co.uk. Here I talk about what it can and what it can’t do. Continue reading Godox A1 and iPhone X→

For Christmas this year, my wife bought me two presents – the lovely set of wine glasses I posted about a while back, and the Neewer AD200 flash. One of the features I was particularly keen to test out, is its ability as a light source for UV-imaging with its bare-bulb head. Hence this post, to demonstrate its capabilities for this. Continue reading Neewer AD200 Flash – UV Imaging→

Happy New Year to all my readers. As I was working on New Year’s Day, I have not been able to post about the New Year’s eve dinner my wife had prepared for us. Now while she was preparing the meal, we also decided to have a gin and tonic tasting to compare the aromas and taste of 5 different gins – just to add some fun to the festivities. Continue reading New Year’s Eve Dinner→

Since getting the Coravin wine dispensing system, we have been trying quite a few bottles of mature wine which were bought many years ago without fear of them going bad. But with the Riedel Magnum glass, I found that the aroma from some of the lesser wines was just not coming through, which made me question whether it was the right glass for our tastings.

And having watched the movie on Amazon Prime Video ‘A year in Burgundy‘, which documents a full year of life in Burgundy wine-making, I observed the shape of the wine glasses they used for their top wines was markedly different from my Riedel Magnum glass. After a little research, I came upon the Zalto Universal wine glass which is highly rated by wine experts and wine connoisseurs. And so for Christmas, my wife bought me 6 of these wine glasses (great for wine tasting with spares in case 1 or 2 get broken). Continue reading Zalto Universal Wine Glass→